KTVU News TV Station Reports Phony Asiana Flight 214 Pilot Names
If you want to get in to journalism, checking facts should be a pretty important part of your job. But a news station, desperate for a scoop took to the airwaves to report the names of crashed Asiana Flight 214 as, Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow.
Now if you're thinking, "What's so strange about that?" Look back at those names and say them phonetically a few times. A news station just reported the pilots of a plane that crashed were named "Something Wrong", "We Too Low", "Holy F****" and "Bang Ding Ow."
In some situations this would be a hilarious play on words, but this was a plane crash where at least two people lost their lives. Making light of death with racist remarks has no place in news reporting.
According to Matthew Keys, this station claimed the names were confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board and later issued an apology along with a retraction.
How does no one on a news team notice something like that?! Even if it was "confirmed" I think I would second guess that list of names.
Here is an excerpt from the actual retraction from KTVU:
Prior to air, the names were confirmed by an NTSB official in the agency’s Washington, D.C. office. Despite that confirmation, KTVU realized the names that aired were not accurate and issued an apology later in the newscast. The correct names of the pilots in the cockpit were Lee Gang-guk and Lee Jeong-Min.
Now the National Transportation Safety Board is playing damage control as well.
The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6.
Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft.
Blaming it on an intern...oops.
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